What a month. We promised you with our blog title 7 months ago that we would be your “Win­dow into the Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion”, but we couldn’t have pre­dict­ed that CBS, Time Mag­a­zine, WSJ, NYT and oth­er main­stream media would be such great allies in this neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty effort.

FOR DECADES, THE PREVAILING DOGMA IN neu­ro­science was that the adult human brain is essen­tial­ly immutable, hard­wired, fixed in form and func­tion, so that by the time we reach adult­hood we are pret­ty much stuck with what we have. Yes, it can cre­ate (and lose) synaps­es, the con­nec­tions between neu­rons that encode mem­o­ries and learn­ing… . The doc­trine of the unchang­ing human brain has had pro­found ram­i­fi­ca­tions. …But research in the past few years has over­thrown the dog­ma. In its place has come the real­iza­tion that the adult brain retains impres­sive pow­ers of “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty” — the abil­i­ty to change its struc­ture and func­tion in response to expe­ri­ence. These aren’t minor tweaks either.

In short, the brain is not that dif­fer­ent from a mus­cle (bet­ter said, a group of mus­cles). It can be trained. At any age. Not with mag­i­cal pills or cures, but with focus and dis­ci­plined train­ing.Brain Fit­ness for Stu­dents

“Gilles de Robi­en, the Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter (in France), has ordered chil­dren to car­ry out between 15 and 20 min­utes of cal­cul men­tal (men­tal arith­metics) every day from the age of 5.

Mr de Robi­en moved after a report from the French Sci­ence Acad­e­my said that chil­dren who prac­ticed sums in their heads had bet­ter mem­o­ries and quick­er brains.

Ques­tions for the final year of French pri­ma­ry school

Cal­cu­late in your head

Half of 48, 72, 414, 826 and 1,040

Three times 41, 52, 109, 212 and 503

A third of 12, 66, 93, 309, 636 and 3,024

76–9, 987–9, 456–19, 497–19 and 564–29

15x4, 25x4, 30x4, 35x4, 40x4 and 45x4

(The answers in the arti­cle)

What a great men­tal train­ing pro­gram, and exam­ple of the role schools can play in cul­ti­vat­ing the minds of stu­dents and devel­op­ing cog­ni­tive skills beyond the typ­i­cal focus on tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines.

Speak­ers include a tru­ly “Dream Team” of neu­ro­sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors such as Michael S. Gaz­zani­ga, William C. Mob­ley, John D.E. Gabrieli, Robert M. Sapol­sky, Robert Syl­west­er, and many many oth­ers. You can check the pro­gram here http://www.edupr.com/schedule2.htm.

The descrip­tion of the event is: “Use this explo­sion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge to cre­ate new, pow­er­ful par­a­digms for teach­ing and health­care. Cut­ting-edge dis­cov­er­ies in neu­ro­science may soon trans­form edu­ca­tion­al and clin­i­cal inter­ven­tions by enhanc­ing mem­o­ry and cog­ni­tion. Dis­cov­er the influ­ences of emo­tions, gen­der and the arts. Explore new ways to enhance cog­ni­tion and to assess poten­tial ben­e­fits and pit­falls of using phar­ma­col­o­gy, tech­nol­o­gy and ther­a­py to boost per­for­mance.”

The orga­niz­ers of the con­fer­ence extend­ed a very kind offer to Sharp­Brains read­ers.

A) The nor­mal price for the con­fer­ence is $499 before Jan­u­ary 30th, and $545 after­wards.

B) For Sharp­Brains read­ers, you can reg­is­ter at the reduced price of $475 if you do so before Feb­ru­ary 2nd. You can reg­is­ter here http://www.edupr.com/reg.html, mak­ing sure to write SharpBrains1 in the com­ments sec­tion

“Over the next few years, we will see these [brain health] pro­grams burst into the main­stream with great force,” pre­dict­ed Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, a clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of neu­rol­o­gy at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine and co-founder of Sharp Brains, a com­pa­ny that eval­u­ates and helps mar­kets brain-fit­ness pro­grams. A grow­ing body of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies sup­ports the trend.”

“The major find­ing was stun­ning: Rel­a­tive­ly short train­ing reg­i­mens — 10 ses­sions of 1 to 1.5 hours each over five or six weeks — improved men­tal func­tion­ing as long as five years lat­er. Boost­er ses­sions helped advance these gains, and some peo­ple found it eas­i­er to per­form every­day tasks, such as man­ag­ing finances, after men­tal work­outs.”

“I think what this shows, con­clu­sive­ly, is that when healthy old­er peo­ple put effort into learn­ing new things, they can improve their men­tal fit­ness,” said Michael Mar­siske, a mem­ber of the research team and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da at Gainesville. “And even if struc­tured learn­ing is rel­a­tive­ly brief, you should be able to see the ben­e­fits of that learn­ing for some time to come.”

Not all train­ing is alike, how­ev­er. In the ACTIVE study, each form of men­tal train­ing (for mem­o­ry, speed or rea­son­ing) affect­ed only the func­tion tar­get­ed with­out cross­ing over into oth­er realms. Train­ing results were strongest for speed of men­tal pro­cess­ing and weak­est for mem­o­ry.

“What this tells us is that spe­cif­ic brain func­tions may need dif­fer­ent types of train­ing,” said Dr. Jef­frey Elias, chief of the cog­ni­tive-aging pro­gram at the Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging, which helped fund the ACTIVE study.

Stu­dents and seniors can train their brains. Which means: all the rest of us can do so, too. More and more sci­ence-based and struc­tured pro­grams will appear-now there are only a hand­ful of them. We will keep you informed in this blog and site.

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15 Responses

Wow, this is a ter­rif­ic site! I’ve recent­ly start­ed up a blog on Word­Press (link above), and the info on your site is exact­ly the sort of extra infor­ma­tion I’d like to refer to and com­ment on in my blog.

Would it alright to copy and paste snip­pets of your posts from time to time and com­ment on them, in my blog? I find this stuff fas­ci­nat­ing, and I strong­ly believe this sort of knowl­edge is in many ways just as impor­tant as the knowl­edge stu­dents accu­mu­late in schools. I’d of course cred­it your blog as the source of infor­ma­tion. But I’ll under­stand if you don’t feel com­fort­able with it. Thanks!

Thanks for the per­mis­sion! I real­ly appre­ci­ate it. I was won­der­ing, though, since I’m fair­ly new to this blog, if it’s pos­si­ble to link direct­ly to a spe­cif­ic post. Or would I have to click on the post and copy and paste the url from the address bar?

About SharpBrains

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, CNN, Reuters and more, SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science.